Edifying Edibles
by Luna Silvereyes
Summary: Food is a strange concept indeed. It can stir up a basic reaction once consumed, a feeling unknown and strangely not unwelcome. I'm not sure what to call it, but it's not as if I mind its presence.


Edifying Edibles

Luna Silvereyes

I like the humans.

They say interesting things, they do interesting things, and to me, they're just plain interesting. The rest of my kind seems to think they're little more than a collectively intelligent, albeit useful nuisance. That's not to say that I never find myself a little weary of their complaining, but it causes me to wonder if maybe I'm, as the humans like to say 'a little on the insane side'.

When I'm not patrolling the city searching for a new client, I enjoy sitting on a bench somewhere and watching the people go by. Of course, only a few ever notice me. I must say that I find it a bit enjoyable to be stroked by an innocent human child who sees me as a common earth cat. With this in mind, I may have discovered a primitive, extremely base emotion that I and my species might possess. Granted, I have no idea what to call it as yet, but I'll continue to think about it. While I have no new clients, I haven't much else to do in the meantime.

Hmm...that girl there noticed me. After all, how many humans stop and stare in confusion at an everyday park bench? I won't bother saying anything for now. I already know who she is. Her name is Kaede Hinata. My contacts have actually had their eye on her for a while now, so I'll wait until I receive the clearance to approach her. No sense making a hasty decision before we know the extent of her potential. Once I receive the go-ahead, I'll approach her. Until then, it's nice to just curl up and take a nap in the warm sunshine. Now that I think about it, it's been a while since I've been home. I have to wonder how the others are doing. I haven't been home in many, many earth years. I don't even know how many it totals up to now. My first client is now known the world over for her diary and the trials she endured during what the humans call the Holocaust. I've long since seen her witch destroyed and devoured by another magical girl. It is a shame these girls all have to die, given their immense potentials and all, but it's for the ultimate good of the universe. If we didn't do this, who would? We don't want the universe to die any more than the rest of its unwitting organisms, and we have the technology to prevent it, so why not use it? Maybe someday, someone else will discover a way to gather the necessary energy without using these girls and the Incubators will finally earn a long-overdue respite from this tedious work. If that day ever comes, maybe then we can put a conservative effort into understanding our equally tedious clients.

Emotion.

It's a hard concept to wrap my mind around. It's actually just as hard for me to understand as it is for a human to understand the concept of having no emotions. Incubators don't cry, we don't love, we don't hate, we don't express any sort of physical feeling toward others and objects. Our lives are simple, our existence meaningful in our work. I have heard that long, long ago, our kind once possessed this ability called 'emotions'. But for some reason, evolution amidst the Incubators gradually erased this ability in all but a few select individuals. Perhaps this explains why I enjoy delicious food here on earth and why I like to have my ears scratched by a fond client. I will admit that I have a tendency to sneak off with a certain kind of tiny baked good at this particular shop I see sometimes in this city. No one ever sees me take it and once it's inside my mouth, it vanishes from view to those who aren't aware of my presence. I'm not really sure why I enjoy the taste of these little sweet baked balls of dough so much, and I don't dare mention this to anyone else. As with any living thing, I require sustenance in order to function. I have a stomach, a heart, a digestive tract, everything needed to process food. However, where the food a human eats is turned into energy and then waste product, everything I and my kind eat is transformed into pure energy, nothing more, nothing less. There is nothing wasted. I have met others my kind, cousins, the humans might call them, who inhabit cities all over the world and who claim to 'enjoy' various cuisines. I have to admit, it's nothing like the simple food from our home. Perhaps another factor of human emotion is another word I sometimes hear called Imagination. The Incubators create necessary things based on the need of the community in whole. Nothing frivolous is ever made simply because it serves no purpose. This is why, compared to earth, my home is beginning to seem very simple. I suppose humans might call it boring, but I have no reason to believe this, so I don't pay any attention to those details.

That scent again. Ahh, that does smell delicious. Strange...until I came to this planet, I'd never known what the word 'Delicious' meant. Now, I know that it means to eat something tasty. I haven't had my home food in so long that I truly forget what it tastes like, if it even has flavor. The fact that I'm beginning to think of such things considered taboo and mentally disabled in my society is concerning to me. Could it be that I might possibly be one of those mentally disturbed Incubators who say such bizarre things like "I missed you while you were gone", and "I'm feeling sad today,"?

My fur bristled. No, of course not. My parental unit would have told me long ago. Oh, I forgot to mention; Incubators who discovered the humans were shocked at the fact that family groups existed on earth and actually functioned together properly without fighting for the most part. Of course, the family groups discovered then were incredibly primitive and it took decades to learn the language they spoke in order to receive clients, but the concept for today's society was there. The reason for the shock was that in my society, the word 'family' stands for a 'family tree' of different organisms or flora. If I tried to explain our reproductive strategies to you, it would confuse you to no end, simply because your brain can't grasp the words or the concepts. To compare it to earth's strategies, I suppose amoebas could be a good example; splitting off from the original to create a new organism. Our process is much more complicated than that, but it's a good example.

Ahh, that scent is making my paws tingle. Perhaps this feeling is what humans call 'pleasure'. My physical body is reacting positively to that scent coming from that shop, the bakery as humans call it. It may even be that the Incubators do in fact possess primitive forms of emotion, to a minute enough level that we don't recognize it as such. Basic instinctual reactions such as tasty food igniting a positive response on the flavor receptors. It may be worth mentioning to the others back home. So far, the only Incubators who noticed any responses like this were the ones sent to earth to gather energy, such as myself. Adding to this, the best explanations came from the individuals who sampled the food in the places they were assigned to. There were only ten of us sent to earth, so there is little evidence to go on.

I suppose I'll put it, as humans say, on the back burner and go in for another of those baked dough balls. I really should find out what they're called while I'm at it. I should also think about where I'm going to after this. After all, I can't hang around this bakery forever.


End file.
